September 6, 2010 On Sports Double Fault By Louisa Thomas There are doubles matches being played in the U.S. Open. By good players. A trophy will be awarded. And no one seems to care. On The New York Times tennis blog, Times Magazine editor Gerry Marzorati asked the art critic Michael Kimmelman why that is. Kimmelman suggested that tennis is “aspirational.” Many tennis fans—recreational doubles players themselves—are the kind of people who live in “modest homes and cook modest meals” but read Architectural Digest and study sous vide cuisine. They grew up dreaming of being the best, and the best play singles. “Doubles reminds them that they’re no longer young, that life can be disappointing, that not all dreams come true, and that not anything is possible,” Kimmelman wrote. “Well, maybe that’s a little too Dostoeyevskian, but you get the point.” Well. Of course tennis is aspirational; most sports are. But the “modest home” theory seems a little weak (especially considering the stratospheric prices of Open tickets!). I suspect that the real answer is simple: doubles is ridiculous. It’s fine to play—if you have four people, only one court, and bad knees. But let’s not pretend that it’s something more exalted. I’m told that true tennis fans love doubles. The intensity, the strategy, the quick hands! The all-around quality of the game! So it may be that I’m discrediting myself. It may be that you will no longer take me seriously. To you serious people, I say: I’ve tried, I really have. I’m still trying. Yesterday, even though Rafael Nadal was playing and Andy Murray was down, I watched Vania King and Yaroslava Shvedova, the Wimbledon champions, take on Barbora Zahlavova Strycova and Iveta Benesova. The match, won by King and Shvedova in a third-set tiebreak, was as good and thrilling as doubles gets. Watching the players demonstrate their shifting formations, deft adjustments, and quick reflexes was exciting, like watching President Obama swat a fly. But how many times do you really want to watch Obama swat a fly? What really bothers me about doubles, though, is not boredom. It’s more fundamental. The problem is that doubles is played by partners. Two people simply should not stand on the same side of the net. Part of the reason tennis is so compelling is that a player has to confront the fact that she’s out there by herself. A doubles player does not. Consider the Bryan brothers, the best doubles team playing, one of the best teams ever. One is left handed, one right; one is Bob and one is Mike. Otherwise, they pretty much share a life. The zygote did not fully split. They always have each other. They are never, ever alone. Playing singles, you cannot seek advice from a teammate or a coach; you cannot punch or taunt or chase your opponent. You can only hit the ball. Sometimes, your greatest competition is yourself. Tennis, to me, is Jelena Jankovic, shrieking in desperation as the wind whipped her ponytail and her shots. It’s Ana Ivanovic—talented, sweet, pretty, a former No. 1—chasing bad service tosses under pressure. It’s Rafael Nadal, touching his face and plucking his shirt, the tennis player’s way of crossing himself. Even when the stakes are nonexistence, the isolation can be hard. I like to play with the sun to my back, and not only because it’s easier to see the ball. I want to watch my shadow. It keeps me company. Overcoming loneliness can be the greatest challenge, and the most important one.
September 3, 2010 On Sports The Good Bully By Louisa Thomas James Blake doesn’t like to make it easy. Not even to cheer for him. One fears association with the odious J-Block, the fans who wear Blake T-shirts and chant Blake’s name and act like asses. It’s hard, too, to embrace a guy who shouts “my house,” as Blake did yesterday after defeating the Canadian Peter Polansky in the second round. Plus, he’s been canonized as an “inspirational figure,” honored on opening night in a ceremony called “Reach & Dream” for being a biracial kid from Yonkers who endured scoliosis, career-threatening injuries and illness, etc. It’s best to avoid athletes who are considered heroes. Still, I was pulling for him yesterday, and I’ll be pulling for him when he takes on the third seed, Novak Djokovic. Blake is a former top-five player, but he is old and aching, and he needed a wild card to play here. He’s one of the most stubborn players on the tour and one of the most fragile, and therefore one of the most interesting to watch. Blake’s flurry of forehand errors during the first-set tiebreak yesterday, including one total mishit, was self-doubt made manifest. He has a propensity to over-hit and to mope, “woe-is-meing around the court,” as commentator Pam Shriver put it during Wimbledon. As someone who over-hits and woe-is-mes around the court, I feel a certain kinship. And, as it happens, Blake once inspired me, though not because of his dramatic story. I first saw Blake play when he was a Harvard sophomore and I was a high school junior visiting the college. I had heard of Harvard’s dreadlocked wonder and wanted to see him for myself. There were a couple of highly-ranked juniors on my high school team, but I’d never watched any player like Blake. When the ball came off his racket, the laws of physics were suspended. At one point, his opponent hit a deep backhand, forcing Blake onto his back foot and out of position, and then unleashed a sharp cross-court forehand. Blake, who had been scrambling to regain his footing, reversed directions at the moment of content, broke into a flat sprint, and—impossibly!—reached the ball inside the service line of the adjacent court, where he ripped a forehand that sent the ball along a bending and dipping path. It seems silly now—Rafa Nadal hits that forehand practically every match—but I really thought I’d witnessed a miracle. All my efforts to be cool were abandoned. I was on my feet, shrieking, hopping, fluttering my hands. It was the most memorable moment of the weekend. I sometimes think that it was one of the most memorable moments of my teenage years. What has stuck with me even more vividly than incredibility of the shot was the way Blake looked up into stands after he hit it, a stupid grin on his face. It was clear that he wasn’t looking to the tiny crowd of parents and friends to ratify how awesome he was. Something special had just happened, and he wanted us to be a part of it. And we were. Blake went pro that summer. He had some early success, but after struggling with grief, illness, and injuries (including a broken neck, suffered when he collided with a net-post), he fell out of the top 200 and found himself playing Challenger matches, the minor leagues. Methodically he worked his way back, and then at the 2005 U.S. Open, he made it to the semis, where he lost to Andre Agassi in a fifth-set tiebreak, in what was one of the best U.S. Open matches ever played. Blake has always been able to take anyone to five sets, even now. At the Australian Open this year, he lost to last year’s U.S. Open champion, Juan Martin del Potro, in five. It’s a particular talent, losing matches so consistently in that way, and it’s not clear whether he wants to win too much or not enough. He plays an uncompromisingly aggressive, all-or-nothing style. “It’s almost like being a bully out there,” an espn3.com commentator described Blake’s game yesterday afternoon. “If he’s on, he’s a good bully.” I’m not totally sure what that means, but it sounds right. I have my own unjustifiable, sentimental theory for why Blake finds himself in so many epic matches: he plays to be remembered, to be part of something special, more than he plays to win.
September 3, 2010 Ask The Paris Review Pathologically Shy; Loving The Possessed By Lorin Stein Any reading material for a pathologically shy 33-year-old woman? Who misses sex and fucking and making love and all that? Who even misses blowjobs. Who hasn’t gone out with a man in ages? How do people even talk to each other anymore? I’ve forgotten. —November Whisky Gosh, poor you. Shyness can be so hard. The first book I would read, if I wanted to reconstruct the language of sex and romance, is Mary Gaitskill’s novel Veronica. Or really any of her books. You always get the feeling (at least I do) that Gaitskill is asking herself a question very much like yours. Asking and answering. For similar reasons you might also try Elizabeth Bowen, for example The Heat of the Day. Neither book is cheerful, exactly, but I think they might speak to your condition. Take heart! Read More
September 2, 2010 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: Radhika Jones, Part 2 By Radhika Jones This is the second installment of Jones’ culture diary. Click here to read part 1. DAY FOUR Morning I put in some book requests, per last night’s TLS: Tom McCarthy’s new book C, which is out September 7, and his first novel, Remainder, which I meant to read after the great piece Zadie Smith wrote in the New York Review of Books a couple of years ago, “Two Paths for the Novel,” about McCarthy and Joseph O’Neill. Meetings and a quick edit eat up much of the morning. Lunch with a favorite literary agent—one of those agents who turns out to represent all the writers you’re hearing great things about. We fill each other in on what we’ve been reading. I make a mental note to pack Rosecrans Baldwin’s You Lost Me There in the vacation bag. Afternoon Gilbert sends me a 5 P.M. pick-me-up, in the form of the YouTube video for Cee Lo’s hilarious single “F–k You.” I love the typography! Thanks, Gilbert. I start working on my book review, which is to say, I write a sentence that may or may not be the lede. Trailer break! The Social Network. I am bizarrely excited to see this movie, which stars Jesse Eisenberg and his hoodie. And now onward to the trailer for the fake Twitter movie, which looks even more awesome. In the NYT, I read a piece on the Shakespeare Quarterly opening up its traditional peer review system to open review online. As a former (recovering?) academic, I like this idea. Remainder arrives. I check out the Literary Saloon, which leads me to New York‘s twenty most anticipated books of the season, and to a piece about Barnes and Noble, also in New York, by Andrew Rice. Paris Review alert! One of NY Mag‘s most anticipated fiction books is Danielle Evans’ Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. We published Danielle’s first short story, “Virgins” (issue 182), which went on to be selected for Best American Short Stories. And Andrew Rice had a great piece of nonfiction, “The Book of Wilson,” from his travels in Uganda, in issue 177. I also read “Dear Prudence” on Slate. This is the only advice column I ever read. I’m not exactly sure why—I’m not sure why I read it, and I’m not sure why it’s the only one I read. And I don’t have time to puzzle it out, so it’ll be one of the many things in life I just chalk up to mystery appeal. Evening Bhangra class. A few years ago (actually, about six years ago, yikes), my friend Sailaja and I started taking bhangra classes. We had no dance background, and I have the flexibility of a No. 2 pencil. But our teacher, Ambika, is brilliant, and after a year or so we had become, as Sailaja put it, not great bhangra dancers but passable bhangra students. Which we thought was pretty impressive! Home and slightly wired from exercise, so Max and I pop in the third episode of Foyle’s War. Bedtime (re)reading: an essay on pain from Atul Gawande‘s book Complications. Read More
September 1, 2010 On Sports Let It Be Love By Louisa Thomas There’s a T-shirt favored by a certain kind of tennis player that says, “Love means nothing to a tennis player.” It’s a pun that no one, it seems, can resist. The 2010 U.S. Open’s slogan is “It must be love.” Please. But watching Rafael Nadal beat Teymurez Gabashvili last night, I couldn’t help but think about tennis-love. It’s has been on my mind since I read Andre Agassi’s excellent memoir, Open. Every five pages, Agassi declares that he hates tennis. Predictably, he comes to embrace the sport. (Open is a bestselling memoir, after all.) More interestingly, that it’s clear that, on a deep (and sometimes inaccessible) level, Agassi has always loved tennis. He calls the court a prison. But he also talks about the game the way one might talk about love. It is a long rally between loneliness and intense intimacy. And if nothing else, in Agassi’s book tennis has the subtext of sex, or something like it. He wins the French Open going commando. He falls for Steffi Graf not only for her perfect legs but for her backhand slice. Tennis players are professional athletes: they play to win. But the U.S. Open is a tournament, and a tournament is courtship as well as war. Take the inescapable rivalry: Federer v. Nadal. Roger Federer: intelligent, elegant, and powerful. He moves like liquid, anticipates the angle, monograms his clothes, and has great hands. The blogs went bonkers over his between-the-legs winner against a shrugging Brian Dabul in the first round, but I’d trade all the trick shots in the world for the sight of one forehand. It is grace made real. At his best, Federer plays just beyond the possible. He captures something out of reach. Rafael Nadal is the warrior to Federer’s priest. He’s quick, plays low, swings his racket like a lash, grunts like a moron, explodes into shots, wears neon, and hits blistering winners off his back foot. His ground strokes plummet toward the baseline, weighted with spin. His style is physical, his manner humble, his serve en fuego and oh, those arms! Last night, Gabashvili played the tennis of his dreams, of anyone’s dreams (except—poor Gabashvili!—Nadal’s)—and still, it didn’t matter. Nadal is another kind of player, another beast. Every time his racket whips skyward, creating that incredible topspin, my heart leaps. There is strength and joy in every shot, and desire. Some people will tell you that you have to choose, that it’s one or the other, Federer or Nadal. Do not listen to these people. Others will favor Andy Murray or, say, Mardy Fish. These people are contrarian, or Scottish, or confused. Who doesn’t want Federer and Nadal play for as long as possible? Pull for the underdog if you must, but choose wisely. Let it be love!
September 1, 2010 The Culture Diaries A Week in Culture: Radhika Jones, Editor By Radhika Jones DAY ONE MORNING Tea and the NYT Editor’s Choice on the iPad. Morning commute: F train, relatively uncrowded because it’s the end of August. Reading survey reveals it’s a periodical-dominated morning: the Times, the WSJ, the Metro, the Post, and two people facing off with The New Yorker. I pull out my advanced reader’s copy of Skippy Dies, which I am in the middle of, and which is so absorbing that I need to be careful not to miss my stop. Second cup of tea steeping in office kitchen. Delightful news via memo left under my door: from now on, the motion-sensor light in my office will only come on if I push it. I hate the fluorescent light, but until now have been powerless to disengage it. Now I will just never turn it on! Wake up computer and look at Time.com to see what my colleagues have been up to overnight. Also look at the NYTimes Web site, and the Guardian, and Talking Points Memo. And a few book blogs, an old Paris Review habit I’ve reignited in these slightly news-slow summer months—which is how I come across the sad story of the death of VQR‘s managing editor. On deck for this morning: signing off on finished magazine pages; ideas meeting; edits for next week. Also opening all the mail that has piled up in the last few weeks. I should open my mail every day. Then it would not pile up. I know that, but sometimes I rebel, and this time it has gotten so bad that random colleagues have begun stopping by my office and offering to help me open it. I am the office Collyer Brother. Morning meeting over. Half an hour until next meeting. Office gloriously unfluorescent. Work takes on low-lit, romantic flavor. E-mail from my brother wondering which Scrabble app he should download so we can play together. I want to play with him, but he lives in Andover, Mass., so if we are to play, I will have to join Facebook. Open InCopy. I love InCopy. It lets me work in layout, and secretly I’ve always wanted to be a graphic designer. This reminds me that I never saw that documentary Helvetica, all about the font. Turn on iPad and add Helvetica to Netflix queue. It’s available for instant viewing! Maybe I will watch it this weekend. Meetings meetings meetings. Lunch! AFTERNOON Back at my desk after Italian food and a lovely chat with an entertainment publicist who fills me in on a few fall movies. Caitlin Roper (of Paris Review fame) alerts me to a tweet from Bill Burton saying the President just bought a copy of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. I’m going to go ahead and assume that’s because we put Franzen on the cover of Time. President Obama, if you need any more book recommendations, feel free to call me directly. I think you’d really like David Mitchell. Heroically refrain from reading Skippy Dies during multicolor wheel spin while waiting for InCopy file to open. Culturally with-it colleague Gilbert Cruz drops by, ostensibly with a work question but actually to recommend I watch the Free Willy horror movie recut on YouTube. It’s fantastic. Then we watch The Shining recut as romantic comedy. Then, because I am a Harry Potter fan, I must read “Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Gitmo” on time.com, about the books on offer for Guantanamo detainees. Call neighborhood bookstore, BookCourt on Court Street, to see about the first Paul Murray book. They don’t have it, alas. Meanwhile, twilight is coming on, and it’s kind of dark in here. May need to buy an office lamp. LATER Writing headlines is hard. LATER STILL I’m done for the day. Skippy and I are reunited! EVENING Friday nights were made for catching up on Top Chef. Life before DVR—I’ve blocked it from my memory. Read More